So You Need to Nail an Interview on Skype, Part II: When you are the interviewer

By Michael KraftIf you do a Google search on “interviewing people on Skype”, you get a gazillion responses telling job candidates how to use the platform. But if you’re the employer, the one seeking employees, there’s almost no guidance. In this column we’ll try to break some new ground.

To be fair, I actually searched harder and found just one guide for employers, so kudos to Inc.com. Inc tells interviewers to do four things. Three are similar to guidance we gave to interviewees in the December issue of our newsletter/blog, the opposite side of the coin.

Look for red flags. We told candidates not to use a profile name like kegstandchamp2014. Inc tells interviewers to look for cues like that about the people they are interviewing.

They give one other piece of advice. They tell the interviewer that it is your job to set the example…make it a professional interview from the get-go, and lead the process.

I think we can go a little further. In my column in December, I told candidates to pay attention to the physical environment. Similarly, as the interviewer, you want a place that will be quiet, and you want to tell your colleagues that you’ll be in an important session and to limit interruptions to the biggest emergencies. You will be representing your organization so, same as for the candidate, you should prefer an uncluttered background and good lighting. You can use the same tricks to make sure you’re looking at the person, e.g., put a photo by the camera and spend most of your time talking to the photo.

I just conducted my first interview (as the interviewer) a couple of weeks ago. I’m happy to say that, within the obvious limitations of my general attractiveness, I kind of nailed it!